“Every company says people are our greatest asset. Everybody says it in whatever way they dress it up, but they need to put their money where their mouth is.” – Dee Booth, Group Human Resources Director at mac-group speaks up on how companies should prioritise their employees’ needs.
As part of our commitment to supporting candidates to develop fulfilling careers, we’ve invited some HR Leaders to share the secrets of their success.
This week, we had a great conversation with Dee Booth, who has proven her dedication to her chosen career path with more than 30 years of generalist HR experience. Dee fortuitously stumbled upon this career during her early years, hit the ground running and has continually developed her passion for HR. Dee worked as a HR Director in her previous company before accepting the challenge Group Human Resources Director with leading construction company mac-group.
Can you tell us how you got into HR and what it was that made you stay?
Many years ago, I joined a business as a secretary, and they had an opening in the HR department. I was only doing the job for about six months when they let go of the HR Manager. With that, I got completely thrown into the deep end while I covered that role for a period of about six or nine months. They got a new HR Director into the business, and he promoted me and encouraged me to gain my qualifications part-time. I worked alongside him for about 12 years.
I went into HR when I was 21. In the early days, it was more about learning the role. But it’s only really when I took responsibility myself rather than just reporting to a HR Director or HR Manager, that I felt like I came into my own.
Every company says people are our greatest asset. Everybody says it in whatever way they dress it up, but they need to put their money where their mouth is. And I think being able to influence up to the board level got me thinking, ‘I’m going to stick with this.’
A lot of people have specialised in different areas, particularly rewards and benefits but I personally made the decision to stay in a generalist HR role. I love that I have the ability to get involved with different things. My day at the moment would be, interviewing somebody in the morning, then benchmarking salaries and benefits. I’m also doing a lot around coaching development and mentoring, but things like health and safety training and other soft skills, I’ve passed to the line managers.
What key challenges are you facing right now as a Group HR Director?
Our supply chain is causing challenges. Within Construction we have a lot of semi-skilled people or operative labourers. We’ve seen a massive shortage of skilled tradespeople. Brexit obviously was starting to have a bit of influence on that, and COVID-19 has had a massive impact as well.
A lot of people that we employ were Eastern European. Because they didn’t have quite the support mechanisms in place and they had a big lockdown in construction, many of these Eastern European people went back to their homeland because they weren’t earning any money. And it’s been very difficult getting those people back. Also, poaching is rife within our industry. Keeping on top of market rates is quite difficult.
We take the feedback we get from exit interviews very seriously. So, one thing that we are really striving for as a board is to absolutely improve our communications across the company and to be more outward facing in terms of asking the staff what they want. That is really our mission.. We are determined as a company to get better with our communications and to know what the employees want. No more assumptions.
We’re learning as we go along and there is a real family feel to the business. Everybody’s very, very supportive and we’re very flexible in terms of people’s working hours. We recognize that people have got childcare issues, so we work with them. We’re very, very flexible on that. We recognize when people are ready for promotion. It does not need to go through layers of bureaucracy. We can make really quick decisions because we’re an agile business.
Do you have any advice for someone planning to pursue a career in HR?
I think you have to build resilience. There are times it can be quite a lonely position. I’d say that having worked with big HR teams as well, you need to find the balance between supporting the business and making sure you support the employees.
I’ve seen colleagues fall by the wayside because they’ve either been too pro-employee or too pro-company. It’s a really fine line to walk. Your own personal integrity has to be 100%. I’ve had to build resilience over the years as well, because sometimes you do get knocked back and sometimes, you’re in situations that aren’t particularly very nice.
Also, you have to be a people person. You have to care about individuals, but you’ve also got to have a fairly broad mind as well. And the other thing is you have to listen.
So, to summarise, build your resilience, and make sure that your own personal behaviour is exemplary. That includes your integrity, and above all, you really have to care about people.
From recruitment to rewards and benefits, training and employee welfare, Dee readily fulfils any HR function but maintains a more generalist approach to her role. She joined mac-group in 2019 as its Group HR Business Partner and was recently promoted to Group Human Resources Director in January 2022.